nt! Can you give me a glimmer of hope, dear,
or is it still quite impossible?"

Ruth shook her head and nodded and smiled, and sighed, and shed a few
bright tears, in a whirl of delightful confusion.

"It's--it's not impossible at all! I think I am quite sure. I have
been growing surer and surer all this time. But am I good enough? You
remember that six months ago I fancied myself in love with someone
else?"

"I can afford to forget that episode, and even to be thankful for it, if
it has shown you your own mind, so that now you are `quite sure'! Oh,
Ruth, it is too good to be true! Can you really be happy with a dull,
old fellow like me? No country seat, you know; no life of ease and
luxury, just a comfortable, commonplace house, with a husband who is too
hard-worked to have much time for play. I have no fortune to offer you,
dear, except love--there's no end to that wealth!"

Ruth turned her beautiful eyes upon him with a smile of perfect content.

"But that's everything!" she cried. "I shall be the richest woman in
the world!"

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

MARGOT'S ANSWER.

A week later Victor Druce was sitting _tete-a-tete_ with Margot Blount
in the drawing-room of her aunt's London house, a cramped little house
in a fashionable neighbourhood. The house was generally let furnished
during the season, and inhabited by the impecunious owner at those odd
seasons of the year when she had no invitations which made it possible
to saddle other people with the cost of food and maintenance. Just now
there was a gap of a few weeks between the last shooting-party and a
Christmas gathering in the country, so the house had been reopened, and
friends flocked to call and leave cards, foremost among them Mr Victor
Druce, a young man of importance, nowadays, as the accredited heir to
one of the finest properties in the kingdom.

"I am not at home to anyone else this afternoon," Margot announced to
the servant, as Victor took his seat beside her. She smiled to herself
as she spoke, an odd little smile, whose meaning her visitor was puzzled
to decipher. It was a great compliment to be allowed a private
interview, but there was a mysterious something in Margot's manner which
detracted from his satisfaction. He watched her as she poured out tea
at the inlaid Turkish table, with eyes in which admiration and anxiety
were equally mingled. He had known many women more beautiful, but never
one with such an air of grace a